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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27628433">Decomposing</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/dionova/pseuds/dionova'>dionova</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canonical Character Death, Dead Wilbur Soot, Gen, No Beta We Die Like Our Fathers Stabbed Us, Wilbur Soot-centric, angst? not quite sure, did i base this on an old joke i remembered randomly?, i heard "my great unfinished symphony" and kind of went off, please i did math for this, that's a secret i'll never tell, this is all a music metaphor and for that i apologize, xoxo dumb sleep deprived author</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:21:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,157</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27628433</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/dionova/pseuds/dionova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Mozart was buried.<br/>Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.<br/>When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Mozart's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."<br/>He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."<br/>So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."<br/>Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Mozart decomposing."</p><p>Or, Wilbur decomposes.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>96</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Decomposing</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>yes this premise started off entirely surrounding the joke<br/>no I don't regret it<br/>also I specifically calculated the explosive power of Wilbur's TNT just for an offhand reference in this<br/>why do I do this to myself<br/>the math broke my brain for a while since I tried to do it at 1 in the morning<br/>but now that's there for reference if anybody wants it</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The light <em>tap-tap-tap </em>of a conductor’s baton.</p><p>The soft <em>click </em>of a wooden button.</p><p>This is how the symphony begins.</p><p> </p><p>Wilbur turns and gives a salute to Phil, to his captive audience, his back to the players of his sweet composition.</p><p>The snaking hiss of the redstone charge is the opening note.</p><p>The fizzling fuses mark the first transition.</p><p>A beat.</p><p> </p><p>Wilbur holds his arms in the air in anticipation of the next note. His orchestra knows this piece by heart. They do not need any further instruction from him. He sets them into motion, and his players take care of the rest.</p><p>A second beat.</p><p> </p><p>A sudden crescendo, compounding eternally, as the TNT begins its solo piece, and Wilbur feels like Tchaikovsky could never be. The long-dead composer’s sixteen cannon shots cannot hold up to Wilbur’s explosive cadenza. Seven hundred and thirty-six cubic meters of trinitrotoluene. One thousand, two hundred fourteen metric tons of force. Tchaikovsky wouldn’t dare.</p><p>Sforzando, fortissimo, ritardando.</p><p>A sudden, abrupt note; louder than loud; gradually slowing in tempo.</p><p>Oh, it is music to Wilbur’s pleading ears. He’s been starved of this discordant harmony for so long. For months. But it is so very worth the wait.</p><p>There are a few distant accompaniments of screams, sharp tones where they shouldn’t be, but Wilbur finds that their accent only further elevates his composition.</p><p>Silence permeates the air, the calm after the storm of Wilbur’s work.</p><p>All the years of his life. All the months of his preparation. All the weeks of his anticipation.</p><p>All leading up to this.</p><p>Absolute perfection.</p><p> </p><p>Phil is shouting at him to his side, but he cannot hear him. His ears are ringing with the ending notes of his final symphony. Behind closed eyes, he imagines the rapturous standing ovation he shall receive, and Wilbur wraps his arms around himself at the thought. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? The unbridled attention of hundreds, no, <em>thousands</em>, all on the edge of their seats waiting for the next movement? He can see it clear as day.</p><p>Wilbur opens his eyes, and there is no great amphitheater packed with listeners. There is no grand stage with red velvet curtains. There are no spotlights shone upon him. There is a crater and streams of water and ash in the air and horrified onlookers clutching wounds.</p><p>He certainly isn’t dressed as a conductor should be; instead of a finely tailored suit, Wilbur wears a tattered coat and ratty beanie. Nonetheless, he is still here, ready to take his bow.</p><p>He has no orchestra. All his players were inanimate objects, closer to dominoes toppling over each other than proper professionals. Either way, their music was amazing, a perfect rhapsody. Is it done? Wilbur’s not quite sure. Though, wouldn’t calling it unfinished be all the more poetic? All the greats have done it: Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Mahler, Bruckner.</p><p>Wilbur will leave a legacy of his own behind.</p><p>Let others take his symphony of destruction and add to it, create a final movement, bring it to a euphoric close.</p><p>He would love to see it. But he intends to be gone by then.</p><p> </p><p>The elegant <em>shink </em>of a sword ends the concerto of Wilbur Soot.</p><p> </p><p>There’s a joke, though not a particularly good one, about Mozart. It goes like this:</p><p>When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Mozart was buried.</p><p>Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.</p><p>When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Mozart's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."</p><p>He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."</p><p>So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."</p><p>Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Mozart decomposing."</p><p> </p><p>As Wilbur Soot decomposes, so does his final work. Slowly and steadily, as the months pass, L’Manberg rebuilds, undoing the damage of Wilbur’s explosives. Over a thousand tons of explosive takes time to repair, but repair it they do.</p><p>The crater stays, but it is refined and shaped, less a wound and more a scar. It heals over, scabbing over the staccato blast spots with a glass floor upon which they can build a city.</p><p>The destruction of the city is the next to be undone. They start anew, towering upwards and making something bigger and better than before. A coherent whole, so different from the controlled chaos of the original L’Manberg. A new harmony to play over the quiet elegy of the L’Manberg of the past, Wilbur’s L’Manberg. This is Tubbo’s L’Manberg, a place where history can be moved past and the future lies as an open road ahead.</p><p>They have started da capo, a signal from the doomed conductor Wilbur, and they move ever onwards. Tubbo might be the one to lead the orchestra now, but it is less coordinated symphonic movement and more improvised acapella. The tone has changed. Is changing. Will change. The obbligato walls are gone, the overture rewritten. Wilbur’s great Symphony of L’Manberg is decomposing.</p><p>Wilbur himself sits quietly in his grave atop a hill overlooking his country. He lays undisturbed for months, a few gentle purple irises and pink zinnias sprouting next to his marble headstone, embossed with a final chord for the musician.</p><p>Though his body is silent, Wilbur is not done.</p><p>Occasionally, a L’Manbergian will hear the plucking of guitar strings, a tiny trill of piano keys. The great conductor, continuing his work beyond the grave. He decomposes, his last symphony decomposes, but he writes on.</p><p>And Tommy hums a gentle tune as he chases after the hints of his music discs, a mixture of their songs he so misses and melodies of his own.</p><p>And Tubbo strums his ukulele and sings nonsense songs with his friends, sitting around a campfire and planning the next bits of the reconstruction.</p><p>And Fundy taps his piano to pass the time as he works, remembering a time when his father’s hands navigated him around the keys of the instrument.</p><p>And Phil whispers a lullaby to a son long gone, seated atop a peaceful grave and missing him with an ache running deep in his chest just like the sword he’d stabbed his son with.</p><p>And Technoblade hammers out the beating of war drums as he stands at an anvil and prepares ever more.</p><p>Wilbur’s last symphony is unfinished, after all.</p><p>Someone needs to write the final movement.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>listen,, i promise,,, i write things that are better than this<br/>please,,, i swear,, aaaaaaaa</p><p>also I apologize for copious overuse of musical terminology</p></blockquote></div></div>
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